


Last Train Home

by ButterfliesAndPenguins



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Picks up right after episode 9, Second Kiss, Sweet, i am dying from cavities, i cried so hard at episode 9 please here have all my feelings about it, soft, the train ride home from the airport, train kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8726038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterfliesAndPenguins/pseuds/ButterfliesAndPenguins
Summary: Exhausted, Yuuri and Victor quickly board the last train to Hasetsu, immediately after reuniting at the airport. Barely exchanging any words, they still feel closer than ever.[Takes place immediately after the ending of Episode 9 ((post-"proposal" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )) ]





	

_“I wish you’d never retire.”_

Victor’s words echoed softly in his ears as they dashed out of the airport, luggage and poodle in tow, to catch the last train back to Hasetsu.

As they slumped into the hard train car seats, the adrenaline rush from meeting Victor and having to sprint to the station was sapped from him instantly. Yuuri was already feeling the jet lag and exhaustion from flying—an experience he never quite adjusted to, despite nearly a decade of travel for competitions and training. The two of them caught their breath, chests heaving slightly as they settled in after the lurch of the train and the automated overhead voice.

The last two days had been a whirlwind. Being without Victor for that short time had both felt like an eternity and like a runaway blur. So much had happened, and Yuuri partially regretted not being as emotionally present in his skating as he could have been—that he had let Victor steal a piece of his heart back to Japan with him. But now that he was with him again, Yuuri had been free to give him his whole heart. He wasn’t worried anymore. This time, it had been returned to him in full. Victor untied his own scarf and then Yuuri’s, motheringly, and Yuuri pushed back his bangs in exhaustion, left hand still tingling from where Victor had kissed it. He smiled quietly at himself in the train window.

Makkachin wasn't quite back to his usual friskiness, but he still lurched excitedly in the aisle. Viktor chuckled and mumbled something affectionately to him in Russian, a phrase Yuuri had heard him speak to the dog before, but he hadn't quite parsed the meaning of, and Makkachin returned to his feet reluctantly.

The dull metallic roar of the train wrapped around the silence between them like a blanket. Neither of them plucked up a conversation beyond the occasional request for tissues or a water bottle. Yuuri thought back to how, between Victor’s bubbly and chatty personality, his intermittent silences had either felt brooding and unknowable, or deeply contemplative, clearly holding back from unleashing a brewing storm of criticism. Both his silences and outbursts had often brought on Yuuri’s own tendency to babble, a fact for which Yuuri had felt both grateful and hopelessly embarrassed. Today, after all that had transpired, they were both exhausted and spent for words, but this particular silence felt comfortable and easy. Like the accidental quiet that falls when people become engrossed in a long-anticipated meal, and don't want to disrupt the enjoyment of it.

While city lights catapulted by outside the window, their two bodies swayed lightly in sync with one another as the rails rocked their seats. Whenever the glare died down, he caught Victor’s gaze in the window reflection, glancing occasionally from the scenery to linger wistfully on Yuuri’s profile.

The tide of thoughts and ideas Yuuri had needed to tell him was ebbing, and he waved them on, knowing they would all be there to unleash on Victor tomorrow, or in the weeks to come as he remembered the details that would inevitably scatter like dreams that fade after waking. For now, enough questions had been answered for both of them—the only ones that mattered.

_Stay with me?_

_I will._

For now. For as long as they had. It was enough.

Yuuri hadn’t been aware that his wrist was draped over the armrest between them until Victor’s ungloved hand slipped beneath it and caught his own, tentatively weaving his fingers between Yuuri’s. Smiling, Yuuri squeezed Victor’s hand lightly, and in response Viktor’s thumb swept lazily back and forth. Yuuri watched with unfocused eyes until he felt slightly hypnotized, and his gaze floated upwards until it found Victor’s.

Beneath the ghost of a light frown, his eyes were tracing slow arcs along Yuuri’s face, as if he were making sure every feature was still in place, and that he had missed nothing while they were apart. The turquoise color of those eyes had always reminded Yuuri of photos he had seen of glaciers on the sea. Like the ice that Victor skated on contained untold depths that only he fully understood. But tonight, in the yellow light of the train, they were less mysterious, more searching, and more sharply present than they had ever felt, and they were gathering him in. Soon they were blurring before him and their noses were almost touching. The warmth of their breath was a thin haze between them. Yuuri tilted his chin to shorten the distance and let his eyelids flutter closed.

A sharp curve in the tracks tossed them lightly back and forth as Yuuri’s nose actually bumped Viktor’s chin, and he lost his grip on Victor’s hand in an attempt to steady himself. They both laughed quietly in surprise, and Yuuri brushed his smarting nose gingerly. He looked away in embarrassment, but after a few moments Victor sought out his hand again, and Yuuri’s closed around the long, pale fingers once more. A few breaths passed, and Victor dropped his hopeful gaze, deciding to be content with the moment.

Yuuri wasn’t. He blinked back to focus and turned to Victor, reaching out his free hand to cup Victor’s jawline and pull him back in.

He pressed their lips together lightly, barely moving, and kissed Victor softly, like snowfall. Victor held his breath and melted sweetly against him.

Yuuri thought of the countless touches they had exchanged over the season that were often an attempt to anchor—the fierce hugs, that single flurried kiss, each reassuring grip of the others’ arm… but this one had no desperate hold, no cling. It was gentle and unassuming, but not out of timidity—in this moment Yuuri felt more comfortable, more understood with Victor than he had ever felt with anyone in his life. Because this time there was no need for reassurance. They already had it. There was no tremble of nervousness, no desperation. Just quiet joy.

Victor let him lead slowly and feather-light, and it occurred to Yuuri that it was possible Victor had never been kissed quite like this by anyone before.  It seemed new for the both of them, and yet not unfamiliar. Against his soft touch, he didn't feel like the unshakeable, flawless Victor that commanded everyone's love and attention, who masked a steel will and a ferocity beneath his calculated grace. He felt like _his_ Victor, the one who often fell asleep on his floor, the one that held his breath during Yuuri's skating when he thought Yuuri wasn't looking. The Victor who smiled to himself and whose unfathomable eyes could be disarmed by a small whisper.

The piece of his heart that constantly longed to pull Victor closer, and that was desperate to command his attention had dissolved away, and it seemed that neither of them felt the need to deepen the kiss, or cling to it longingly as if they may not have the chance again. They moved slowly, savoring the impossible softness of their drowsy moment together.

Yuuri drew his face back slightly, not wanting to ask too much too soon, out in the open despite the mostly vacant train car, but Victor closed the empty space and covered his lips in one final, delicate kiss before letting him retreat. It was like an answer to a question he hadn't voiced, a silent "Me too."

Lingering with closed eyes, they rested their foreheads together, which swayed slightly contrarily from the movement of the train car. Yuuri both longed for and dreaded their destination. Would the spell break once they returned, or would they find more, deeper moments just like this one?

Eventually they returned to watching the countryside slip dizzyingly past outside, at first pretending not to gaze fondly at one another every so often, and then giving up on pretending. Yuuri could distantly hear the familiar piano notes of his free skate program clinking through the music of the train tracks, looping lazily through his mind. From the corner of his eye he saw Victor’s head slump forward sleepily, then rise in feeble defiance.

He wondered if it was possible that Victor was even more exhausted than him, having likely gotten no sleep while Makkachin was still in harm’s way, and then having stayed up late to watch his free skate performance. Had he worried as much as had showed on his face at the China Cup in that parking garage? Was he as afraid of losing Yuuri before the Grand Prix Final as Yuuri was of losing him?

He watched Victor’s head continue to nod sleepily. Yuuri had already seen him fall asleep more times that he could count. He envied his coach’s childlike ability to fall asleep anywhere nearly instantaneously, completely unhindered by plane or bus travel. But tonight as Victor’s chin bobbed against his chest, he seemed to be fighting to stop his heavy eyelids from closing. As he struggled against them, Yuuri wondered if Victor was trying to stay awake for him out of some sense of duty as his coach, like he wanted to make up for abandoning him in Russia by being here for as long as he could now. That, or… was it possible that he cherished this time alone with him as much as Yuuri did, not wanting to blink away a moment of this rare, contented peace?

Yuuri’s heart swelled to think that Victor might covet his presence as much as he treasured Victor’s. Months, even weeks ago he would never have believed the thought, but the relief in Victor’s eyes, and his desperation when he sprinted to reach him at the airport gate had laid every last doubt of Yuuri’s to rest. Somehow, through some miracle of time, Victor’s happiness had grown to run parallel with his own.

Finally Victor’s temple drooped softly onto Yuuri’s shoulder. He shifted to balance it—heads were heavier than he had guessed before he’d had anyone’s to hold—and he gazed down at his coach’s long eyelashes, now lightly crimped from stress and sleeplessness. Yuuri had thought he would get used to this man’s heartbreaking beauty from sheer overexposure during nearly all his waking hours, but in quiet moments it still took his breath away. Fondly, he craned his neck to place a kiss on the thin spot at the top of his parted head of hair, and rested his own head gently against it, succumbing to his own exhaustion.

He wasn’t sure how long they dozed like that on each other’s shoulders, but the alarm he had the sense to set before they boarded went off just as they were nearing the Hasetsu station. A twinge of guilt pained his chest as he turned to wake his sleeping coach, whose eyebrows were gathered upward in half distress, half blissful dreaming. He brushed the silver bangs fondly from his face and shook his shoulders gently.

“Victor, wake up. It’s our stop next. We’re almost home.”

Inhaling deeply, Victor squinted in the dull light and attempted to rise, nodding dutifully.

“Okay,” he mumbled, managing to straighten slightly before his head tipped onto Yuuri’s shoulder again. Just as Yuuri was sure he’d fallen asleep once more, he heard Victor murmur softly to himself through a smile.

“Home…”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I haven't cried this hard from happiness at an anime or show since I can remember, it meant a lot to me and I wanted to share all my warm fuzzies about it.


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